Week 6 Essay: Analyzing The Stonecutter

For my essay this week I decided to analyze and discuss one specific story in the Japanese Tales Unit (Lang). It was one that as I read it, I appreciated the story for the lesson it was teaching and how the story swings back full-circle to end where it started. The story is The Stonecutter.

            The story begins with a poor stonecutter whose art is being able to carve stone and pick out which types of stone are best for different purposes. He goes everyday to the mountain to cut the stone and has never seen Spirit of the Mountain who supposedly helped the men become rich and prosperous. The story introduces how the stonecutter did not believe in the spirit and then actually provides foreshadowing in the end of the second paragraph “But a time was coming when he learned to change his opinion.” This sets the stage for how the reader can see that the spirit of the mountain will probably come back into the story at some point.

            In the next paragraph, we see that the stonecutter’s luck begins to change as the spirit hears his request to be a rich man, and upon returning home, the stonecutter’s wooden hut has become a palace. His first wish had been granted. Later, the stonecutter sees a prince with a golden umbrella being used to hide the prince from the piercing sun coming down. The stonecutter, sweating from the intense heat, was jealous and wished he too could be a prince. He was envious.  He wished for what he didn’t have. The spirit heard his plea and turned him into a prince.

And here is where the big central message comes. He was rich and now a prince “But yet it was not enough.” It is a typical of the human nature. Many times when we want what we can’t have, as soon as we get it, we are not satisfied and want something else.

The stonecutter then goes one a power-craze. He wishes to be the sun, but then the clouds hide the sun. So he wishes to be a cloud, but then the stone withstands his rain. So he wishes to be a rock. “And the rock he was, and gloried in his power.” The stonecutter was finally content and proud that neither sun nor rain could overpower him. Until one day when a stonecutter came and begin chipping away at him. He cries out “'Is a mere child of earth mightier than a rock? Oh, if I were only a man!” And the last wish is granted as he is turned back into a man.

“His bed was hard and his food scanty, but he had learned to be satisfied with it and did not long to be something or somebody else. And as he never asked for things he had not got, or desired to be greater and mightier than other people, he was happy at last and heard the voice of the mountain spirit no longer.”

The last paragraph perfectly explains the story. The man learned that he could never be happy if he was always chasing something else. He could not find happiness in always yearning for more and never appreciating what he had and who he was at the moment. The spirit of the mountain represented his selfish hunger, and after he learned to be content and grateful, the voice went away. 

Man on Mountain, Image Source: Pixabay